The New Zealand Open golf championship - a regular stop on the Australasian PGA Tour - has lost its co-sanctioning status with the European Tour.
The tournament has been dropped from the 53-event European Tour calendar for 2009 released today.
The Australian Masters, the other event co-sanctioned by the two tours - remains on the schedule and will be played from November 27-30.
NZ Golf chief executive Bill MacGowan said the move to drop the NZ Open was anticipated and NZG was pushing ahead with negotiations for a four-year deal with the United States' second tier Nationwide Tour.
The Open had always struggled to attract sufficient European tour players and the stars generally stayed away.
"We are not disappointed to have lost European Tour sanction for the NZ Open," MacGowan said.
The European Tour schedule culminates in the $US20 million ($NZ32.15 million) Dubai world championship at Jumeirah in November next year.
The "Race to Dubai" sees events in 26 venues, starting this November with the HSBC Champions event in Shanghai.
Five tournaments were added to the 2009 schedule but the NZ and Asian Opens and Volvo Masters do not feature.
"The European Tour offered us a couple of dates which weren't satisfactory from our point of view," MacGowan said.
"The other key point was that it was only for a one-year term (so) we have taken the position we would rather negotiate with the Nationwide Tour for a longer-term deal and get some security and surety going forward for the NZ Open.
"We always knew we would have some problems with a European sanction when they introduced their Race to Dubai, but it came a little bit earlier than expected.
"We are not disappointed with our exclusion from the European Tour and there will be no great effect on the NZ Open.
"One of the things (in the past) that was disappointing was that we didn't get the number of players we were expecting (from Europe) with that co-sanctioning."
Discussions on the NZ Open, to be held at The Hills course in Arrowtown, were progressing and NZG would be able to make an announcement on final details at the end of the month.
MacGowan indicated that a likely date for the NZ Open would be a week after the NZPGA championship, set for March 5-8.
The NZPGA championship is an established stop on the Nationwide Tour.
